My Summer Reading List

Considering that it’s finally starting to feel like summer in Los Angeles, it’s time to step away from the computer, head on down to the pool, and start reading!

I’m not much for the trashy mystery novels on the beach… So here’s my uber-geeky summer reading list (with a few at the end that don’t really have to do with healthy eating, but I’m told are worth the read).

“Through ubiquitous advertising, almost universal food availability, the growth of portion size, and unchecked marketing to kids, we’re encouraged to eat more than we need, with consequent negative impact on our health. Knowledge is indeed power, and Nestle’s lively, witty, and thoroughly enlightening book–the work, readers quickly see, of a food lover intent on increasing sensual satisfaction at table as well as promoting health–will help its readers become completely cognizant about food shopping. It’s a must for anyone who eats and buys food and wants to do both better.”

“Eat to Live offers a healthy, effective, and scientifically proven Six-Week Plan for shedding a radical amount of weight quickly. The key to the program’s success is simple: health = nutrients: calories When the ratio of nutrients to calories in the food you eat is high, fat melts away.”

“Novelist Kingsolver recounts a year spent eating home-grown food and, if not that, local. Accomplished gardeners, the Kingsolver clan grow a large garden in southern Appalachia and spend summers ‘putting food by,’ as the classic kitchen title goes. They make pickles, chutney and mozzarella; they jar tomatoes, braid garlic and stuff turkey sausage.”

You probably already know I’m a big fan of Zinczenko’s book — it’s completely changed how I eat and how I view meals (for the better, I believe). Recommending eating from twelve different “food groups,” and eating six times a day, it all just started to make sense for me. (This is an update to the original, so I’m curious to see what he’s changed.)

“…That’s the ‘evolutionary’ part of Citron’s plan: if you eat the way our hunter-gatherer Cro-Magnon ancestors ate, you’ll avoid health problems because you’ll be eating the foods our bodies evolved to consume. More than half of the book consists of recipes and menu plans for putting Citron’s theories into practice.”

“The latest from novelist Foer is a surprising but characteristically brilliant memoir-investigation, boasting an exhaustively-argued account of one man-child’s decade-long struggle with vegetarianism. On the eve of becoming a father, Foer takes all the arguments for and against vegetarianism a neurotic step beyond and, to decide how to feed his coming baby, investigates everything from the intelligence level of our most popular meat providers-cattle, pigs, and poultry-to the specious self-justifications (his own included) for eating some meat products and not others.”

“Kessler describes how, since the 1980s, the food industry, in collusion with the advertising industry, and lifestyle changes have short-circuited the body’s self-regulating mechanisms, leaving many at the mercy of reward-driven eating. Through the evidence of research, personal stories (including candid accounts of his own struggles) and examinations of specific foods produced by giant food corporations and restaurant chains, Kessler explains how the desire to eat—as distinct from eating itself—is stimulated in the brain by an almost infinite variety of diabolical combinations of salt, fat and sugar.”

by Michael Pollan (One of my favorite books; I’m due to read this again!)

“It’s a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You’ll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.”

“With this updated edition of his earlier book A Place of My Own, readers can revisit the inspired, intelligent, and often hilarious story of Pollan’s realization of a room of his own-a small, wooden hut, his “shelter for daydreams”-built with his admittedly unhandy hands. Inspired by both Thoreau and Mr. Blandings, A Place of My Own not only works to convey the history and meaning of all human building, it also marks the connections between our bodies, our minds, and the natural world. ”

“Jonah Lehrer arms us with the tools we need, drawing on cutting-edge research as well as the real-world experiences of a wide range of deciders from airplane pilots and hedge fund investors to serial killers and poker players. Lehrer shows how people are taking advantage of the new science to make better television shows, win more football games, and improve military intelligence. His goal is to answer two questions that are of interest to just about anyone, from CEOs to firefighters: How does the human mind make decisions? And how can we make those decisions better?”

“Universally acclaimed when it was first published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has become a modern classic. More than any other book of its time, this collection captures the mood of 1960s America, especially the center of its counterculture, California. ”

What else should be on this list? What’s on your Summer Reading List?

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